Mark Twain's Library of Humor - Hardcover

Clemens, Samuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517105926 ISBN 13: 9780517105924

Publisher: Wings, 1995

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1888. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Timon Croesus come up and stand about so gentlemanly and say, " Well, Mrs. Potiphar, are we to have no more charming parties this season?" And Boosey says, in his droll way, "Let's keep the ball a-rolling!" That young man is always ready with a witticism. Then I step out, and James throws open the door, and the young men raise their hats, and the new crowd says: "I wonder who that is!" and the plush and purple and calves spring up behind, and I drive home to dinner. Now, Carrie, dear, isn't that nice? CARRIE'S COMEDY. BY WILLIAM LIVINGSTONE ALDEN. LLIAM LIVINGSTONE ALDEN made his reputation as the humorous editor of the New York Times. He was born at Williamstown, Mass., in 1837, received a collegiate education, and then studied law. He has published some eight volumes, mostly of a humorous character. Dr. Bartholomew, of Towanda Falls, Penn., is the proud possessor of an extremely precocious child. Miss Carrie Bartholomew is only ten years old, but, nevertheless, she is a young person of extraordinary acquirements and conspicuous culture. At the age of six she could read with great ease, and before reaching her eighth birthday she had developed a marked taste for novel-reading. About the same period she made her first attempt at authorship, and soon achieved an enviable reputation in several local nurseries, where her fairy tales were recited with immense applause. In her ninth year she wrote a novel--of which, unfortunately, no copies are now in existence--and begun an epic in six books upon "St. Bartholomew's Day"--which sanguinary event she classed among the ancestors of her family. The epic was discontinued after the completion of the second book, owing to the premature extermination of the Huguenots, but the young author lashed the Catholic party w...

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Old pieces of humor are like antique toys: Some of them still work and some don't, but they all have a certain fascination. Especially if we know that they worked for Mark Twain. And when you find one that does still work after, say, a century and a half, if you are like me you say things like 'Look at that workmanship' to cover your wonderment at sharing inner-child glee with someone who was in the grave when your grandmother was born. To my surprise, I feel that way about a good many pieces in this book."        --from the Introduction by Roy Blount, Jr.

"Mark Twain is the Lincoln of our literature."--William Dean Howells

From the Inside Flap

Beginning with the piece that made Mark Twain famous--"The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"--and ending with his fanciful "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper," this treasure trove of an anthology, an abridgment of the 1888 original, collects twenty of Twain's own pieces, in addition to tall tales, fables, and satires by forty-three of Twain's contemporaries, including Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ambrose Bierce, William Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, Artemus Ward, and Bret Harte.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wings
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0517105926
• ISBN 13: 9780517105924
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 707